The Talented Mr. Ripley, Purple Noon And The Psychology Of Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley
Ten years ago I visited Procida, a small Mediterranean island part of the Italian territory, famous for being the filming location of The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), while Purple Noon (1960) was shot between Rome, Naples and Ischia.
I remember being very impressed by The Talented Mr. Ripley when I saw it for the first time; it is a particularly captivating thriller movie, featuring beautiful and exotic scenery due to the fact that the story is set in the fictional Italian town of Mongibello (Southern Italy) in the 1950s. To recreate the scenic setting of Mongibello, a series of shots were taken among the characteristic views of Procida and the island of Ischia, both located in the Campanian Archipelago. These locations were very helpful for the movie’s excellent cinematography, which is truly breathtaking in the last shots of the infamous boat scene, with the rays of light reflected on the water.
Over the years, The Talented Mr. Ripley has become a cult movie not only because of the intense interpretation of the roles by the main actors (Jude Law as Dickie Greenleaf, Gwyneth Paltrow as Marge Sherwood and Matt Damon as Tom Ripley), but also because of the “dolce vita” atmosphere provided by the breathtaking landscapes and iconic Italian cities in which the story takes place. It is as if the movie was selling you a dream and a lifestyle that is part of the collective imagination, which has become well-known over time, mainly thanks to the iconic photos of American photographer Slim Aarons.
When I first saw The Talented Mr. Ripley I had no idea that the film was loosely based on the first novel in a popular series written by Patricia Highsmith, whose first book in the series was published in 1955. Loving the movie very much and being fascinated by the character of Tom Ripley (probably due in part to the brilliant portrayal of the character by a very young Matt Damon), I was pleasantly surprised to find out about the existence of five books chronicling the adventures of this charming, enigmatic and quite sinister character.
THE RIPLIAD NOVELS AND CHARACTER PSYCHOLOGY: I bought The Complete Ripley Novels box set a few years ago, and last summer I got to read all five novels. Although I do not particularly like minimalist covers, I have to admit that the W.W. Norton & Company editions are meticulously curated in every single detail, and the quality of the paper is excellent as well. There are many editions available on the market, but buying the box set gave me a way to read novel after novel and I literally devoured the entire series, completing the reading in less than two weeks.
Unlike Anthony Minghella’s film, the plot of which corresponds to the first Ripliad book, (with some minor differences in favor of cinematic language), reading the other novels makes the reader feels as if an entire universe was opening up to them; the character of Tom Ripley finds himself involved in many suspenseful adventures that lead him to commit a series of murders over the course of all five novels (about which, however, little can be revealed so as not to spoil fundamental parts of the plot).
The story begins in 1950s New York City where Tom Ripley, a Boston native, gets by through a series of scams due to his talent for forgeries. Following the acquaintance of a wealthy industrialist who proposes that he go to Italy to retrieve his son Richard “Dickie” Greenleaf, Tom sets off for Europe and arrives at the Amalfi Coast, where Dickie spends his days in the company of his friend/girlfriend Marge Sherwood, playing jazz music (of which he is a great fan, as evidenced by many scenes in the movie), painting and swimming in the Mediterranean Sea. The three of them begin to divide their time between some iconic locations such as Rome, Venice and Sanremo, but the story takes on increasingly sinister and suspenseful traits as a series of intricate events follow one another.
Patricia Highsmith has done a masterful job of delineating a psychopathic character who is also a murderer and who manages to be both the evil and the hero of the story that unfolds around him. It is as if the evil caused by this character were a necessary and inevitable evil, and it is almost inexplicable how the reader can find himself “rooting for” Tom Ripley and hoping that this negative hero gets away with murder.
It is pretty much impossible to narrate the plot of all five novels (titled The Talented Mr. Ripley, Ripley Under Ground, Ripley’s Game, The Boy Who Followed Ripley and Ripley Under Water) because one risks revealing parts of the plot that are definitely better to be discovered as one goes through the reading of each book. Although I consider all the Ripliad novels to be excellent (perhaps the one I liked slightly less is Ripley’s Game because many chapters are told from another character’s perspective), my favorites are The Talented Mr. Ripley, because it is the one that kicks off the story and because there are a series of interlocking events that make it impossible for you to put the book down, Ripley Under Ground because it is set almost entirely in France (a country that I love) and which takes place about six years after the events of the first book. The plot of Ripley Under Ground revolves around the art world, since it mainly deals with the topic of art forgeries. About Tom Ripley’s role in the second novel, an Italian friend of mine stated, “[Tom Ripley] is probably the most complex and interesting outlaw ever invented. In every novel he kills someone, but you would not call him a serial killer or a psychopath, or even a gangster. He is disorienting, different, fascinating: he does not appear or show himself invulnerable, we know his weakness and also his vulnerability, which make him suffer. He believes in friendship to the point of «falling in love» with his friends, but he cannot stand interference or intrusion, either in this feeling or in his plans.” I think these words perfectly summarize the complexity and characteristics of a character who is the protagonist of what has become a series of classic crime novels, which succeed in explaining the multifaceted personality of the elegant and refined character of Tom Ripley, a con artist who assumes multiple identities throughout the story and overtly shows that he prefers being “a fake somebody than a real nobody.”
Ripley Under Water is also part of my favorite books in the series because of Tom Ripley’s rivalry with a new character, a situation that makes for a lot of black humor in the final novel of the series. Also featured in this book is Helène, the woman Ripley married; beautiful, rich, charming, loving but not at all submissive to her husband. A woman who appears fully independent within the marriage, which was quite unusual in those days. Some of the events in Ripley Under Water take place in Morocco, and the exotic setting fully contributes to the development of the plot of a book that in my opinion represents the perfect closure of the entire cycle of novels devoted to the character of Tom Ripley.
FILM ADAPTATIONS: The 1999 film adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley is probably the most famous, but it is not the only one ever made: the role of Tom Ripley had previously been played by Alain Delon in the French film Plein Soleil (1960), known internationally as Purple Noon and directed by René Clément, and it is another movie adaptation of the first Ripliad novel. Purple Noon is one of the films that made Alain Delon famous and which many people love precisely because of the way Delon played Tom Ripley’s character, making the audience perceive it as extremely fascinating. The music for the film was composed by Nino Rota, and although Purple Noon is less faithful to the novel than its 1999 remake, the atmosphere created by Patricia Highsmith is predominant in the 1960 movie.
Other books in the series have been adapted for the small and big screen; Ripley Under Ground (2005), a TV movie starring Barry Pepper as Tom Ripley, and Wim Wenders’ feature film The American Friend (1977), which is based primarily on Ripley’s Game but also contains some elements of the Ripley Under Ground plot.
There is also much anticipation for the Ripley (2024) TV series that is less than two days away from its release on Netflix, starring Andrew Scott, Dakota Fanning and Johnny Flynn.
RIPLEY, FASHION IN FILM: The Talented Mr. Ripley still remains the most famous Ripley movie adaptation and much of its popularity is also due to the characters’ style, which plays a crucial role in the story. Tom Ripley’s style is representative of the American East Coast, with key elements of the Ivy League wardrobe, such as the Oxford cloth button-down shirt and the corduroy sports jacket he wears in numerous scenes, and the raglan overcoat that was quite fashionable in the 1950s. Tom’s character appears out of place when he arrives in Southern Italy, and his style is very much at odds with that of Dickie Greenleaf (played by Jude Law), who dresses more casually and relaxed and whose perfectly tailored, pastel-colored clothes perfectly reflect the Mediterranean climate of the Amalfi Coast. Dickie’s clothes are a great example of quiet luxury style because although they look simple and casual, they are actually made with high quality fabrics; white trousers, two-tone shoes, loafers and linen shirts paired with classy accessories such as vintage Persol sunglasses, a luxury watch and some gold rings that play a key role in the plot. Throughout the film we learn that Dickie’s favorite tailor was Battistoni in Rome, a real-life tailor who had become very popular in the 1940s. The Talented Mr. Ripley is a triumph of sartorial menswear style, and this is especially noticeable in the scenes when Dickie is in Rome wearing an amazing navy blue single-breasted jacket with three-cuff buttons, a pale blue shirt underneath and gold cufflinks, completing this look with a striped tie, light trousers and Gucci-style two-tone loafers .
In Purple Noon, Alain Delon wears an array of single-breasted jackets, pleated pants, cotton Oxford shirts, and loafers that are fully representative of classic 1950s Italian men's style in the summertime. The looks sported by the characters in both movies have inspired and still continue to inspire numerous designer collections even decades after the release of Purple Noon and The Talented Mr. Ripley.
OTHER BOOKS BY PATRICIA HIGHSMITH: Besides the Ripliad novels, the only book I have read by Patricia Highsmith is Carol (also known as The Price of Salt), which tells of a romantic, gentle but also quite desperate love story between two women of different ages and social backgrounds.
I was also recommended Strangers On a Train, a psychological thriller that was adapted for the big screen by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. A Dog’s Ransom, published in 1972, is part of my father’s personal library and I would be interested in reading this novel as well.
Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks is a non-fiction title that I also would like to read to learn more about the life story of this incredibly talented crime writer.
“He loved possessions, not masses of them, but a select few that he did not part with. They gave a man self-respect. Not ostentation but quality, and the love that cherished the quality. Possessions reminded him that he existed, and made him enjoy his existence. It was as simple as that. And wasn’t that worth something? He existed. Not many people in the world knew how to, even if they had the money. It really didn’t take money, masses of money, it took a certain security.”